Energy Displacement Shield
An Energy Displacement Shield (sometimes called a Negative Energy Shield or Cycling Shield) was a type of shielding technology utilized by the Gauss Dominion AstroNavy. It differed from normal shielding systems in that it projected a field of displaced "negative energy" particles that existed in superposition around a starship. Polarized coils would be utilized to shape the orbitals of the negative energy field and create small openings to allow friendly weapons fire to pass through or fighters to leave or enter hangars. This type of shield had several advantages when compared to normal shielding. Most notably was that instead of simply deflecting enemy weapons fire it actually absorbed the incoming energy back into the generator allowing the shield to remain up no matter how much fire it took. However this energy absorbing capacity could be taken advantage of by overloading the shield by bombarding it with a massive amount of energy in a very short span of time and overloading a ships' power systems causing the entire ship's power grid to be cooked by a sudden power surge, or in less extreme cases, the shield collector to be destroyed. This meant that volley fire by energy weapons was completely ineffective against Dominion starships. Often, ships equipped with this form of shielding would restrict the flow of power from the Cycling Shield to the weapon capacitors and thrusters, heavy duty components that could handle the powerful electrical surges, while running more sensitive and less energy demanding sensors, life support, targeting and shipboard computers on a completely separate power grid powered by an internal generator. Though this possibility of an overload resulted in the development of what were called Buffered Energy Displacement Shields. Buffered shields were better able to take on instantaneous power surges, but could still be overloaded. Buffered Shields had essentially an energy reservoir which would fill with the displaced energy when the shield was struck by a powerful blast, then more slowly distribute this excess energy to the ship over the course of several seconds. Shields could also be buffered by simply attaching a massive capacitor bank to them which would charge when the shield was struck and then distribute the energy from the capacitors more slowly. Oftentimes both systems were used. Another method to dealing with power overload was for ships to fly in close formation and modulate the shape of their shields to overlap. Though this meant some strategic disadvantages when it came to maneuvering and firing arcs of weapons it could allow ships to share absorbed energy from the shield and distribute it evenly by the size of a given ship's shield generator. Despite these advancements in mitigating this weakness the shields had other disadvantages. They could not be used in tandem with standard shielding as they would try to absorb the energy of a standard shield. (Though there was nothing stopping a ship from having both a standard shielding system and a displacement system, they just couldn't both be activated at the same time. Though typically most ships skipped a powerful standard shield and dedicated the interior space to producing a more powerful displacement shield. The displacement shield did not interfere with AMCS shielding or Decourse Shielding, however.) They were also vulnerable to kinetic weapons and self-propelled missiles. Though they could significantly slow down projectile weapons and muffle blasts by 75-90% these weapons would incur bleed-through damage to the ship. Large and heavy projectiles were especially susceptible to punching through displacement shielding and damaging the ship underneath. Another disadvantage of these shields is that they did not work in atmosphere, at least not without careful and constant modulation, since they would tend to try to absorb energy out of the atmosphere molecules causing the ship to ice up with the frozen atmosphere and come crashing to the ground. (Something you just KNOW some poor commander found out the hard way.) These shields greatly influenced Dominion doctrine, as they typically only utilized energy or laser based weapons for point defense measures, (or when applied to very large ships that could simply overload and obliterate smaller ships) and relied on kinetic or missile weapons as the main offensive tools. Category:Technology